Charles River Analytics-5D Robotics Team to Help Army Develop Soldier-Machine Interface

Charles River Analytics and 5D Robotics will collaborate to develop a soldier-machine interface for U.S. Army robotic systems under a two-year, $1 million follow-on contract.

The companies’ Multi-Modal Interface for Natural Operator Teaming with Autonomous Robots will integrate multiple tracking and robot control systems, Charles River said Nov 1.

MINOTAUR is intended to provide an interface to warfighters who operate with autonomous systems through the use of voice and hand signals in the field.

“This is a particularly exciting project for us because MINOTAUR fuses novel technologies developed by a multi-disciplinary team of robotics, computer vision, natural language processing and human factors experts at Charles River,” said Camille Monnier, principal investigator of the project.

Charles River noted robots can work to communicate and relay directions to other assets through MINOTAUR and serve as a support agent within a human-robot team.

The company demonstrated the technology during the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory exercises last month.